


A New Batch of Shinies

by LeoBananaPhone0829



Series: The Misadventures of the Rest of The 694th Battalion [3]
Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Cute Kids, Dress uniforms are so unflattering, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Lots of rain, Planet Kamino (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:47:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26888362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeoBananaPhone0829/pseuds/LeoBananaPhone0829
Summary: Spooks, Ven and Sage travel to Kamino to round out their platoon.
Relationships: Original Clone Trooper Character(s) & Original Female Character(s)
Series: The Misadventures of the Rest of The 694th Battalion [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1913815
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	A New Batch of Shinies

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for Reading

She tugs on the stiff uniform as she runs across the wet landing platform, the cold air whips around them. A Kaminoan waits just inside the door of the facility, their hands clasped gently in front of them. They're graceful in a terrifyingly cold way. She bows, "You must be Lieutenant Cerez. Welcome to our facility." 

"Thank you, ma'am. Glad to be here." Spooks put on her best officer smile. Ven and Sage grumble into their comms. She tries her best to shake them off, it can't be easy coming back here after all this time. She's heard what happens to clones when they're sent back to Kamino, decommissioning, or reconditioning, there are even rumors of them being killed, horrible, terrible things.

The Kaminoan looks over at her clone escort, Sage and Ven, as well as the rest of Sage's squad, Oli, Worm, Clocks, and Enlo. They wanted to be front and center when they met the rest of their squad. She almost sneers at them, it puts her on edge. "Let's get started, shall we? I'll give you a tour of our facility while your men meet the new squad."

"Of course, ma'am, lead the way." She takes the offered position as she walks next to her. 

She looks over to see Ven and Sage being led away by two troopers, their armor decorated in black and white. 

"I feel this squad will be satisfactory for what your division needs." The Kaminoan tells her. The lieutenant just nods along. "What exactly does your division do, Lieutenant?" 

"Reconnaissance," Axta replies bluntly. 

The Kaminoan hums in what she hopes is an approving tone. They walk through a set of blast doors and her breath all but wheezes out of her, the room is basked in a soothing blue glow, medical officers wander around with datapads peering into the cribs and tanks. "This is where we decant the clones." The Kaminoan leans down and gently picks up the baby. 

Axta stands frozen, staring at a baby in a tank. She's read the mechanics on the gestation of babies without an actual womb but to see it is something else completely. It's so sterile and cold. 

The Kaminoan offers her the child, who is bundled up in a white blanket when she is called by one of the officers. She gently takes the bundle and cradles it close to her chest. Axta didn't have a mothering bone in her body, she was awkward, stiff, her movements jerky and unsure. The baby has brown eyes and brown skin, just like the rest of the clones. He reaches out for a strand of her hair that has fallen from its pinned spot. "No, no, no. You can't have that." She lets him grab onto her finger instead, his skin contrasts hers, the light in the room makes her skin almost glow. 

An alarm goes off on one of the nearby monitors and a clone medic rushes towards her, his own bundle in his arms, "Hold him for me?" He hands the baby off to her with a single-minded focus. She situates the second baby in her arms and he coos at her. 

She bounces both boys, "I can do this. It's just a baby." She murmurs to them. 

_"Hey LT! Where did the longnecks drag you off to?"_ Sage's voice comes from her wrist comm. 

She tries her best to raise it to her face, one of the boys tries to grab at the flashing light, "Not exactly sure, she disappeared after handing me a baby. And then a medic handed me another one." 

\---------------------

Sage leans over to Ven, "They took her to the decanting lab." He tries to keep the grin out of his voice. 

Ven rolled his eyes, "Of course they did," He pinches the bridge of his nose. 

_"Oh thank the gods, someone took them, I'm going to come find you."_ Her voice cuts through the comm.

Ven grabs Sage's arm, "I'm coming to get you, stay where you are." 

_"Uh, yeah. Sure."_ She sounds like she isn't paying attention to what he's actually saying. 

Ven sighs, "She's going to kill me way before this war does." He turns to Sage and his squad, "I'll be back in a bit." He turns on his heel and moves down the hall. 

\---------------------

She wanders through the white halls, clones look her over but don't stop her as she tries to take everything in. She turns down another hallway, this one with significantly less foot traffic, she breaks out of her haze when she hears hushed giggling and whispers. "Shh, we have to be quiet." 

She pads silently to the dark alcove where the noise is coming from. 

"What if Commander Blitz finds us? We'll be in so much trouble!" Another voice says. 

"You're just embarrassed cause you got us lost!"

When she peeks around the corner she sees three cadets arguing in the shadows. One of them looks at her, "Oh no." His brown eyes are wide. 

"Are you guys lost?" She asks. 

One of them steps forward, clearing his throat and standing straight, "No sir, we're not." He tells her. 

"I heard you whispering, Small Fry. You should work on that." She tells him. 

He deflates, his shoulders slumping, "She knows." He groans. 

"That's alright, I'm lost too. We can be lost together. I won't let you guys get in trouble." She crouches so that she's eye level with them, "I've got an ARC trooper looking for me right now."

One of the other two pushes his brother to the side, he has blonde hair, "An ARC trooper?!" He asks excitedly. 

"ARC-4753. We call him Lieutenant Ven." She tells him. 

The third cadet stays silent, his arms crossed over his chest as he stares at the ground, he fiddles nervously with his shirt, worrying the fabric between his fingers, when he meets her eye she can see a scar on his cheek, "I got us lost, sir." He looks so serious for someone so young, they couldn't have been more than six, which means they would only be three standard years old. 

"What's your names?" She asks softly. 

The excitable one speaks first, almost bouncing on his feet, "I'm five-two!" 

"CT-4567, sir." The serious one tells her. 

She waits for the third one's name, "That's Shy. He's the only in our squad with a name so far," Five-Two tells her. 

Shy looks up at her for a brief moment before his eyes are back to looking at his boots. "Alright," She stands and points to Five-Two, "Five-Two, Forty-seven sixty-seven," She points to the next cadet, and then she points to Shy, "And Shy. I think I can remember that. I'm Spooks, let's go find us an ARC trooper, shall we?"

\------------------------

When Ven turns the corner he finally spots her, her pink hair standing out in the vast amount of white. When the troopers blocking his line of sight finally moves he sees that a cadet is clinging to her back and another one is holding her hand, a third circles around her babbling on and on. She smiles and nods along. 

Ven stops in his tracks, the sight makes his heart flutter. She's treating his younger brothers like they're actual people, not just future cannon fodder, she treats them like they actually matter. 

The cadet on her back whispers something in her ear and her laugh rings out in the cold hall, it's a sound that takes his breath away, he blinks, reigning himself back in before he continues down the hall, "Lieutenant!" He calls out. 

She whips towards him almost throwing the cadet off, he clutches her neck tighter. She looks down at the cadet still clutching her hand and says something to him with a small smile, pointing to Ven. The boy's eyes go wide, the one on her back slides to the floor and straightens his fatigues, the others fix their posture. 

"I thought I told you to stay where you were." Ven crosses his arms over his chest plate, leveling a glare at Cerez. 

"These cadets decided to show me around instead." She smiles. 

"And are these three cadets happen to be the same ones that Commander Blitz reported missing and unaccounted for?" Ven looks down at one of them, he has blonde hair, a harmless mutation. 

She shrugs, "They aren't exactly missing, they didn't leave the facility." She's one of the ones that know the regs just enough to find loopholes in them. 

His glare intensifies. 

"They were misplaced, not lost." She shies away a bit. 

He motions over a clone dressed in black and white, "I think these are your missing cadets. Luckily, they asked Spooks for help." 

"Oh good. We were getting worried, I'll get them back to where they need to be." The clone places a gloved hand on the shoulders of the two boys who step forward, the third still clutches at Cerez's hand.

She crouches down in front of him, "It's alright. This trooper will take you back to the rest of your squad. No reason to be scared." She explains, laying a hand on his shoulder and giving him a soft smile. 

The cadet's eyes flit between her and the trooper before he steps in line with his brothers. She gives the trooper a nod before he leads the three away. 

"Can we go get the new squad now?" Ven's voice is harsher than he wanted it to be. 

She looks down at her boots, "My apologies, Lieutenant. Won't happen again." A piece of her hair falls onto her forehead, he wants to brush it aside but he restrains himself, his fingertips itching. 

He sighs, "We're behind schedule, lets get moving." 

\--------------------------

Pep stands rigid, watching the controlled chaos of the hangar from under the safety of his visor. He's supposed to be excited about this, getting his assignment shouldn't make him feel this unsure. He takes a quick glance at Card, he's standing tall with his shoulders pulled back, his posture loose and easy.

He runs through what he knows about his assignment: 694th Reconnaissance Battalion, his platoon is led by ARC-4753 and an officer, Lt. Axta Cerez, he sounds like a decent guy. His squad leader is CT-4644. 

"Get out of your head, Pep." Smidge cuts through the nervous ramblings of his mind, "Just relax. Everything will be fine." 

Pep squeezes his eyes shut and takes a deep breath, willing away the nerves. They're lucky, their squad wasn't split up, the platoon needed five more men, it's easier to send a training squad than it is to shuffle around troopers already out in the field. 

A gasp comes from Smidge's vocoder, "Is that them?" He asks nodding towards the group of men in battered armor. An ARC trooper and an officer lead the group. The ARC's face is set in a stern expression, a scar cuts across his left cheek. He can't take his eyes off of the officer, her skin is a mix of grey and a light purple, her hair a pink that can only compare to the pictures of contraband candy they were shown, it curls and twists, pinned back. What surprises him most is the scarring across her eyes and the bridge of her nose, the cybernetics seems to look past his visor into his own mismatched eyes. 

When the ARC steps in front of them, the squad snaps to attention. "I am ARC-4753, or as you will address me, Lt. Ven. This is Lt. Cerez." She takes a step back and a trooper steps forward, his hair is longer, unkempt with a green stripe, a small tattoo of a plant decorates his right temple, "This is CT-4644. Sargent Sage. He is your squad leader." Sage is trying to keep the smile off his lips but is failing miserably. He's clearly excited to have new recruits. 

The woman steps up beside him, "Welcome to the 694th. We're glad to have you." Her smile is meant to comfort them but with her eyes, it just looks eerie, she looks almost like a ghost. "At ease." 

Pep relaxes minutely. The four men behind Lt. Cerez move forward, one of them slings an arm around her shoulders, she smiles up at him, "What do you think, LT?" His hair is cut into a mohawk and a crooked grin covers his face. 

"I think they'll do just fine." She says. 

"We're needed back at Triple Zero, we should get moving." The ARC says coldly. 

She nods, "Of course, lead the way." 

Pep looks to Card and then to Flap and Flutter, none of them have taken off their helmets yet, not wanting to leave the safety of their visors quite yet. Compared to the seven of them they look like chumps, their armor spotless and buffed while the other plates are painted a lighter green the paint covering scratches and dings sustained in battle, with the scars on their skin to match. They're real soldiers. 

Card bumps him with his shoulder when he walks by, "I said out of your head." He grumbles. 

"Yeah, sorry." Pep looks at his boots before he follows. 

\------------------------

They're quiet in the gunship, Oli and Enlo argue about the best way to calibrate the gyro-stabilizers on a JT-12 jetpack when one of them finally speaks up, "Why not calibrate during test flights? The user can calibrate it to their exact needs and specifications. It's unorthodox and can be a bit dangerous but it's more accurate." 

Worm steps forward, "Not bad, kid. What's your name?" 

"CT-7938, sir." The trooper replies. 

"Your name, not your designation, Rookie." Sage buts in. 

"Oh, uh. Flap, sir." The trooper reaches up to pull off his helmet. Axta finds herself staring, holding her breath. She shouldn't be nervous, she has a rough idea of what he looks like, she's in a gunship full of clones. She's excited to see what is different about him, what his personality has done to his facial structure, what his eyes look like and what color his hair is. 

When he finally breaks the seal on his helmet the first thing she sees is a white stripe in his hair, it's small, just a patch with the regulation cut but it's definitely there. 

Enlo grins, "You gotta spot there, kid." 

Flap reaches up and tugs at the tuft, "It's just a mutation, Flutter has the same one." Flutter silently takes off his helmet as well, a small smile on his face as he too pulls at the white tuft. 

Oli laughs, "You two twins?" 

"We were grown in the same growth jar. It happens sometimes." Flutter is soft-spoken, everything about him has a soft quality, his eyes, his smile. 

"What's your number?" Clocks speaks up. 

"CT-7939," Flutter responds. 

"Heh, cute." Oli giggles. "Flap and Flutter."

Worm elbows Oli, "Don't be mean. Do we need a reminder of how you got your name?" 

Oli's face goes serious, "You wouldn't dare." His voice drops an octave.

Axta's eyes go wide. 

Worm smirks, "Olee-oop." 

Oli launches himself at Worm, "You bastard!" 

Ven rolls his eyes, "Sage, control your idiots before they break something." 

"Ey! Come on, not in front of the shinies!" Sage separates them. 

"So why are we headed to Coruscant instead of out in the field? The rest of the battalion there? Ct-8721 by the way, you can call me Card." The trooper has a half-smile on his face, his stance easy and relaxed. 

\---------------------

Pep notices a change in the group right away, the troopers drop their eyes to the floor and they draw closer to each other. Lieutenant Cerez has a neutral face when she steps forward, "The 694th Recon Batallion consists of one platoon at the moment. A surprise attack on their base took almost everyone out. Lt. Ven's platoon was on a scouting mission, Sage's squad was the closest so they ran back to help, he lost five men." Her tone is grim. 

"There were no survivors?" Smidge asks.

She shakes her head, "No, there weren't any, that includes both The General and her padawan." 

"Wait, so who's in charge then?" Flap asks.

"Spooks and I have been handling everything." Lt. Ven says.

"Will those men be replaced at all?" Card asks. 

"At the moment, no. For now, we run specialized missions. Hopefully, we will have one soon to get you out into the field. For now we wait until we're needed." Lt. Cerez explains. 

Pep finds himself nodding along with her words. They were made to adapt to anything so this shouldn't hard to adjust to. The woman smiles at him, the same haunting smile as before. "What's your name, trooper?" She asks. 

Pep reaches up to pop the seals on his helmet, Card nudges him, "He's a little shy." He laughs. 

He removes his helmet, "CT-8417, ma'am. Um, Pep."

She smiles, "I look forward to working with you, Pep."

"Last two, come on. We're almost back to the cruiser." Sage is glaring at Oli still. 

Card speaks up first, "8721, sir. They call me Card."

Smidge adjusts the medpack on his back, "CT-7996. Squad medic. Smidge." Smidge's introduction is clinical and to the point. 

\----------------------

A feeling of warmth sluggishly worms its way to her, she barely feels anything anymore after years of neglecting her Force training, after giving up that life, but every now and again she gets a wave of what those around her are feeling. Sometimes it's overwhelming happiness, joy, belonging, love, hope. Other times its profound sadness, grief and loss, anxiety, and fear. She's glad that her men have found a way to start healing after what happened. 

She knows it will take a while for them to come to terms with the loss of everything they had known but at least this is a start. 


End file.
